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As a child, you're filled with enthusiasm and sensitivity. The world is small and your eyes are big.

But as you grow older, everything gets bigger and you stay mostly the same size, give or take a few feet.

The chaos, the complexity and the impossible obscurity of the world surround and overtake you as your sense of significance and security shrinks down to a tiny pinpoint.

You continue on, following the course.

You do things, you accomplish things, you obtain things, but nothing ever solves it that ping disquiet unrest and desolation.

You keep finding yourself in the same place no matter how hard you try or how far you run.

Loved ones die, hearts break horrible things happen.

You realize more and more the horrible things that could and will happen.

Everything becomes a faded backdrop to the unrelenting problems of the day to day.

Eventually, you learn how to deal with it.

You become numb, indifferent, you make sure nothing can really affect you.

It wasn't a conscious decision.

You don't remember making it at least.

Life hurt to touch, and so, naturally you stopped holding on to it so tightly.

Now, nothing much affects you, but you don't feel much of anything.

It isn't quite apathy in the traditional sense at least.

It's not quite depression.

It's something else.

Something in between or outside of these terms.

It isn't a feeling like you're stuck in quicksand but more like the feeling of just okayness while sitting on the white sands of a beautiful beach.

You still function mostly fine. You still get out of bed, get things done, pursue goals, achieve things, engage with the world, but it all feels more automatic.

Things you used to love to do, you might still do, but they don't feel the same or perhaps you don't do them at all anymore and you haven't found a replacement.

You don't have much of a social life anymore, but you're okay with that.

You still go places and do things and know when things are nice, but the awareness of this is often more intellectual than visceral.

Achievements don't feel conclusively great, but more like short-lived breaks from the pain of the failures.

You still keep going at nearly full speed, but you aren't sure why or for what.

Perhaps you've been here for a while, perhaps you've just found yourself here, whatever the case may be, firstly, it's arguably important to recognize that this is a natural and likely inevitable stop on a life that has passed through enough years, enough real moments, enough exposure and reflection, a life that contains enough inbuilt sensitivity.

But of course, this is not a great place to stay.

Like how a callous on part of the hand can serve a useful purpose, a reduction of sensitivity to a particular area that's been frequently irritated.

A degree of a kind of indifference and apathy toward the uncontrollable, irritating and terrible aspects of life can be useful if not essential.

In many seminal schools of philosophy like Stoicism, Taoism and Buddhism, a central principle is to embrace a kind of indifference to or detachment from reality.

From the perspective of the Stoics, it is important to distinguish what one can control from what one cannot and then exhibit a sort of indifference or tempered concern and response to what one cannot, which is essentially everything outside of oneself.

To bear trials with a calm mind, robs misfortune of its strength and burden stoic philosopher Seneca wrote.

In the case of Taoism, a central tenant is to give up the attempt to control things by practicing a sort of nonaction.

From the perspective of Buddhism, and perhaps also. from a more modern Western parallel philosophical pessimism, life is fundamentally suffering and the way to overcome suffering is through nonattachment or transcending the condition of the mind by ending its relentless attachment to worldly concerns and desires.

Ironically similar to what Seneca said, while simultaneously suggesting a very different sentiment, pessimist philosopher Emile Tran wrote, "Having always lived in fear of being surprised by the worst. I have tried in every circumstance to get a head start flinging myself into misfortune. Long before it occurred."

Whether we agree with any or all of these philosophies or these individual ideas within them, there's undoubtedly some merit and reasonableness to applying a degree of detachment or indifference to certain aspects of life.

But a whole other problem occurs when we take it too far.

A hand entirely calloused over makes it hard to feel anything with sensitivity, hard to experience and discern the details of things, the softness of skin, of fabric, of the sand, of a beautiful beach.

In truth, we often build a castle when we only need a shield.

The pendulum swings all the way over into the realm of apathetic stupor and then it can often just stop swinging altogether because perhaps the most dangerous part of apathy is that one of its side effects is not caring much about its side effects.

However, if you want to get rid of or reduce a callous on the hand, you have to stop doing the same thing with your hand and then give it time for the callous to go away.

Likewise, if one wants to reduce the callous nature of oneself, you have to, at least partly, stop doing the same thing with yourself with your life and then give it time to go away.

This could involve partly changing how you live day to day, adding activities, hobbies, challenges or people, or perhaps changing or eliminating activities, hobbies or people, or rather it could involve changing how you think about things uncovering a new framework or paradigm of perception and a way of interfacing with the world.

Or it could be a combination of both or something else.

Of course, no matter what it is, it won't be easy.

Finding one's way out of a state in which one has lost a notable amount of care or feeling requires a certain amount of care or feeling that one might no longer easily have access to. At least not right now.

But perhaps Albert Camus said it best when he wrote, "In the middle of winter, I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer."

Ultimately, life moves in seasons.

We can't always be energized or excited or principally in tune with the good.

We can't always be warm and welcoming.

We can't always be bright and exuding with life.

But like the snow covered soil underneath the wintry landscape still has the ability to produce new life with the changing of seasons.

So, too do you still have the ability to foster new life in time.

You still have your internal world, your faculties, your perspective, your creativity and your ability to adapt and endure.

If you weren't always here, you likely won't always be.

And even if you are, you'll still adapt and you'll be ok whether it's in seasons of struggle or one lifelong experience of the coldness of the universe through your perspective and individual choices, you could still provide yourself with comfort with meaning, with the warmth of invincible fortitude.

Perhaps all we have is this the invincible summer inside of ourselves.

But perhaps that's all we'll ever need.

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